Sometimes it's hard to understand

Every now and again, there are times when something happens during the day and you are absolutely forced to stop in your tracks and just...well, stop. I had one of those moments today.

There has been a man in church that I have always admired. I see him almost every Sunday in church with his two kids, junior high age. There are times when I watch him more than I listen to the sermon. I do this for no other reason than admiration. It really is that simple.

I don't know his full story, and to be honest, I ALWAYS struggle with what his name even is. But I do know that he is a single father who has raised these children after his wife died of cancer. My admiration for him comes from his parenting, yes, but also just for his evident joy and dependence on the Lord for strength.

Today, I am sure he is summoning the Lord to give him a little bit more strength than normal. I found out today that he has pancreatic cancer. And it's bad. The kind of bad that doesn't look promising. When given this information to pray about, it was accompanied by these words: "Pray for either a miracle or that he will be given wisdom to know what to do with his kids."

My day stopped and my heart sank and I was absolutely overwhelmed with questions. Why would God put something like this on someone like that who has already gone through so much? Sometimes these things just don't make sense. They don't seem fair. They don't seem right.

As I tried to explain the situation to my children who overheard the conversation, it brought a smile to my face to be able to tell them that Steve knows Jesus and that, even though it's hard to understand why God would take a Mommy or a Daddy away from their kids, it's good that he knows and has a real and deep relationship with the Lord. Though my heart aches for him and his family, it also rejoices in knowing the legacy of fatherhood he is leaving with his children as he has raised his kids in faith and the knowledge of God.

Burned Out on a King's Birth

It's not a secret to anyone that I don't like Christmas. When I was younger, I couldn't WAIT for the holiday...the surprises, the presents, the trees, the egg nog. I loved it. But somewhere in the time between 7 years old and 31, I began to literally HATE Christmas.

You may wonder why I am bringing this up now. It's October. And this is my point, exactly!

I went to Target the other day to look at potential costumes for my kids for Halloween. I strolled with a childlike grin on my face through two aisles of everything from Wonder Woman and pirates to ghosts and pilots. As I rounded the corner of the aisle to make my way to the next, it's as if time stood still for me and every sound of crying kids and intercom blips went silent.

CHRISTMAS DECORATIONS!!!!!

If I could have dramatically fainted or screamed an awe-inspiring shriek at the time, I would have. But instead, my mouth slightly dropped open, I rolled my eyes like a 12 year old girl and whispered to myself "Here....we......go!" Christmas, in October, is already being shoved in our faces. The snowmen, the lights, the trees, the ribbons and ornaments, the largely obnoxious Christmas countdown that ticks away at every moment of my sanity!

You see, it's not necessarily the fact that I don't like the holiday so much as it the culture we live in and how it buys into the idea that we are obligated to give each other gifts before we kneel at the side of the manger of a humble King. Kids become disgruntled at the lack of getting exactly what they wanted or not enough of what they really didn't need in the first place. Parents become stressed and further indebted in thinking that the more they put on a credit card, the happier their family will be to celebrate together.

There are a few Christmas songs that I REALLY love. O Holy Night and Silent Night are two of my all-time favorite Christmas songs. When the Christmas music comes on in the shopping malls and stores the day after Halloween, however, I become inclined to start to despise the songs. After I hear it roughly 237 times over the course of 70 days, performed by appromixately 31 different artists within 12 seperate generes, it gets a little old. I get burned out on it. And then I never want to listen to it again.

Unfortunately, this seems to be the same kind of process I go through with the story of Jesus' birth and the events surrounding it. Do I like to admit that I get burned out on it? No. But it's a truth. I would LOVE to have a "Christmas" message on the first day of Easter, or on Valentine's Day, or just ANY day in the middle of the year. I'd like to celebrate the birth of Jesus just because it gives so much meaning to my life, not just because it's the time of year to do it.

It's October. I want to be able to enjoy my appetizers of Halloween and Thanksgiving before I'm force-fed the buffet of Christmas! :)

UPS Delivery

I wonder if the UPS delivery man realizes that he just delivered something to my door that is going to change my life...

www.igetpaidtodrinkcoffee.com/yates

Kasey's Great Adventures

Welcome to a new addition of Kasey's Great Adventures. In today's episode, I have chosen to take you on a little journey called "It's Gonna Cuz It Has To". Last night, I finally signed up to be a part of a MLM organization that sells gourmet coffee designed, patented and proven to help lose weight and burn fat. When I first heard of the company, I was highly interested and have been on the edge of signing on for the past two months.

Last night, I finally did it. I jumped. With toes curled on the edge and fists clenched, I took a deep breath, relaxed and jumped into something that I believe to have HUGE potential for me and our family. So here I go, embarking on yet another of my adventures. I don't want to be a millionaire, I don't even want to be a multi-thousandaire. I just want enough money to have some money left over at the end of the month and to be able to GIVE, GIVE, GIVE most of it away. I want to be able to bless with my blessings. I want to be able to focus more attention on Tiny Hands and the work that needs to be done and less on money we need to raise just so we can do it. I want to help my Mom get out of debt. I want to be able to randomly give $500 anonymously to someone who may be in a financial bind.

And if I get to drink coffee and tea and lose weight and burn fat trying to get to that place, then by golly, I'm gonna at least give it a try! And it's GOING to work because it has to! Bon voyage!

No Human-Trafficking Awareness Month?

I am admittedly a little bit annoyed and let me dive right in and tell you why. As most people close to me know, I am very passionate about the issue of sex-trafficking prevention. To me, sex-trafficking is one of the most heinous, deplorable crimes because of all the factors that play into it: kidnapping, rape, deceit, fraud, bribery and sometimes murder. As if that isn't enough, young and innocent girls are often the victims, girls as young as 6 years old. It is illegal everywhere, but it happens anyway. And most people, if they don't know about it, don't want to talk about it.

I was exploring something on the internet today with this in mind. Everything seems to have an "Awareness Month" these days. When I was looking over all the different months, I found things as silly as Pet Dental Month, Lawn Care Month, Hamburger Month, Soul Food Month and Peanut Butter Lovers Month (the last one obviously being one I plan to celebrate in it's entirety). Sex-trafficking Awareness Month...nowhere to be found.

Unless there are more sources out there than my very extensive online research gave me (that being the first and only "hit" I checked out), I cannot find anything even closely resembling a sex-trafficking awareness month. So, this is why I'm annoyed. I started to realize how caught up we get with inconsequential things in our society. I really don't care what Brad and Angelina are fighting about now or what the stars look like without their makeup on. Okay, maybe that's only half true. But to have nothing about human-trafficking? NOTHING? Twenty-eight million people are enslaved today, more than ANY time in history, and the majority of it is either slave labor or forced sexual servitude.

This is a child's issue, a man's issue, a woman's issue and it should be EVERYONE'S issue, whether it is simply and soley just to pray for the issue. An issue like this that is so darkly and intricately woven into the threads of a society and culture can only be broken by the power of intentional prayer. I believe that very firmly. But is must, it MUST, first have awareness of what it really is!

Paul and I, together with Tiny Hands International, have created a prayer initiative specifically for this reason. The initiative is called "One Girl". It is a spiritual and prayerful commitment to uphold sex-trafficking prevention up in prayer. Daily, you commit yourself to pray for one girl, whether it is a girl vulnerable to being trafficked, already across those borders, being sold into a brothel or one who has been discarded into the streets as a useless because of HIV. You can pray for a brothel owner, a man entering the brothel, the parent's who unknowingly sell their daughters into this life thinking they are giving them a hope for a better future in education and employment. The bottom line is, we need prayer warriors to bring this issue into the light of reality for people, one girl at a time.

Since May, Tiny Hands International has had a hand in intercepting over 400 girls at the border monitoring stations between Nepal and India. But whether it was 400 girls or just one girl, it was a life that was saved from this unthinkable atrocity. So whether or not we have the backing of an official month of awareness, we ARE going to get sex-trafficking prevention into the forefront of people's minds.

Rain and rainbows

Rain, rain, go away! Come again another day.

It's raining, it's pouring, the old man is snoring...

Why does rain get such a bad rap, anyway? What did rain ever do to us?!? Okay, so maybe it flooded the entire earth at one time and pretty much wiped out all of mankind, but come on. Let's not hold a grudge. That was thousands of years ago.

I happen to be one of the few people (it seems) that really enjoys rain. I love the smell of rain, I love the sound of rain, I love thunderstorms, I love to play in the rain! In fact, I have a location here in town where, every time it rains, I dream of standing there and letting the cars splash me with water when they pass by and hydroplane. I love it.

Growing up, my sister and brother and I would play outside when it rained. We had a game we would play where we would each color the end of a toothpick a different color and essentially set it in the water in the street and have races. I KNOW I won most of the time but somehow my bigger siblings (who usually bullied me out of my victories) claimed the win. Regardless of win to loss ratio, it's something I always remember when it starts to rain.

Sometimes when it rains, I think of a song my Mom used to sing to me. I like the whole song, but the phrase in the song that I love the most is talking about the name of Jesus being "like the fragrance after the rain." Sometimes when it rains, it reminds me of my golf tournaments that would get rained out when I was younger and how I would have to wait it out in the snack bar at the clubhouse. One of my favorite sounds of rain is in the car when the heavy drops pound on the windshield. Rain, in many ways, sums up my personality. Most people don't like it, most people would rather do without it, but when it stops raining, they're glad it was there for the time...

In the spring and late summer, I always look for rainbows after the rain. Rainbows remind me of the promise God made to never flood the earth again. Without light, rainbows wouldn't appear...a reminder that God's light brings forth beautiful things even in the midst of my dark and rainy times in life.

One of my favorite songs is by an ex-American Idol performer (who, in my opinion, should have won that season, but that's for another blog). Her name is LaToya London and the song is "How I Love The Rain". Check it out sometime if you have a chance, even if it's just the lyrics. Instead of letting rain ruin your days, let it be a reminder of something special in your life. Then when it comes, you won't be so inclined to sing the song to make it go away!

Senior Pictures

This is my first round at taking Senior Photos. I'm just posting a few of my favorite ones I've taken....there are many more but these are some of my personal favorites.

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